Dual Booting Athlon 64 versus Intel with Hypertreading

[TiwiS]

I've currently got an Intel 4 processor with Hypertreading and dual booting is actually brilliant, i can run two accounts on the same computer without either one of them lagging out or losing stick.

This ofcourse only works when HT is enabled because otherwise the inactive client gets to little cpu attention and lags out.

I've been told the Athlon 64 is quite the nice cpu to have and i was wondering if anyone could tell me their experiences on dual booting on such a machine as im worried about distribution of the two processes on a processor that is not equiped with Hypertreading


anyways i'd like to hear from you guys if any of you have any experience with dual booting on an Athlon 64

 

[frogster]

Not actually tried dual booting on my a64.3500. I'll try it and get back to you if no one else does.

 

[Xeth]

tried some weeks ago on a64 3000, insta ld on one of the accs after a few secs ingame. After playing around with "Win32PrioritySeparation" in regedit, I could stick 2nd acc and run around, but only lasted for around 5min, then ld again (Might be some differents between how to set it for win xp and 2k I have missed). But didn't really try alot, since I had no need of logging in 2 accs on one pc.

 

[Comos]

it worked fine even with my athlon 2200+ (got a 3500+ now but havent tested it yet)
anyways, with the ahtlon 2200+ it was easy, could run 2 accounts np, without 1 ld'ing, if I wanted to stick up my bb for example, I had to set both game.dll's at low priority, it worked just fine, just went a litttle slower, but not much. But I hear with 1.69 it works very bad now, and accounts go ld a lot easier, but fix on the way in 1.70? I havent kept track of the changes/fixes lately.

 

[Tesla Monkor]

This is what I do to dual-boot my bot box (XP2400/1Gb memory):

(Only one instance of TOA installed on the machine)

- Doubleclick TOA Icon, select char1 from quicklogin, enter password, press ok.
- Doubleclick TOA Icon, select char2 from quicklogin, enter password, press ok.
- Ctrl-alt-delete, select the option that gives you a list of processes and their CPU%.
- Select one of the two disclaimer (grey) screens and click on 'ok' twice, so the game starts to load.
- Immediately select the other grey screen and click on 'ok' twice there as well, so the second instance starts loading as well.
- Switch back to the processes screen and push BOTH game.dll thread to 'BelowNormal' priority. (Rightclick on the name of the thread and select 'priority'.)

Both instances will now load in no time flat and won't LD.

No need for /clientsleep or any poking around in the registery.

 

[punchy]

iirc a HT CPU pretends (through HAL - Hardware Abstraction Layer) to be two physical CPUs to the OS kernel.

HT provides an ideal environment for two instances of DAoC, not through any clever manipulation of process priority, but because the two DAoC threads are served by separate "virtual" CPUs. I think you would see exactly the same stability on a dual 32-bit CPU system.

Side note: HT leads to some interesting legal issues, a lot of software vendors will charge you more for a multi-thread (multi-CPU) version of their software: e.g. the dark days of NT Server on a multi-CPU HAL - you had to pay Micro$oft more for licensing. Although a HT CPU is one physical chip, you might be able to run some software in multi-CPU "mode". The licensing terms aren't clear at this point...

Windows 2000/XP Pro supports/is licensed for up to two CPUs though ^^